Hub 4

I'm not sure VMO2 giving folks on 125, 250, 350 Mb hardware more than capable of providing those speeds is related to that. If the general public want more capable routers with better WiFi they are able to purchase them. Whether they get better freebies than required to deliver the performance they pay for is entirely down to VMO2's willingness to provide them. Quite reasonable of them not to provide someone on one of the lower three or four tiers AX WiFi hardware running DoCSIS 3.1 with multigig port.

To get the latest Hub from EE you either have to subscribe to their top tier or pay £10 a month extra. No-one can legitimately complain if their free equipment is providing what they pay for. 

No plans

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asim18 wrote:

Free equipment??? Lol.

I don't think you know what the margins are on a docsis network and their cheap 10 year old networking equipment which has been profited on 30 times over.

I've worked on the VM network and one in North America. I have an idea what the margins are.

Also for anyone wondering, VM hubs are not given away for free. To assume you receive anything for free from Richard Branson or his namesakes, is a delusion. I had to pay 40 for my second hand router, others have it absorbed into their 18 month contract, which is also being profited on, therefore polar opposite of "free".

I have no idea how you ended up paying for it so won't comment on that one beyond to point out that they're a cost of doing business for VMO2 and are a CapEx expense written off pretty much immediately not an asset to make profit on. I'll rephrase to 'included' to avoid confusion.

When I signed up to Vodafone their router was brand new sealed, when I signed up to BT, their router was brand new sealed, when I sign up to business isps their gateways are brand new sealed. Virgin is the only ISP I've come across who uses 10+ year old equipment. 

Cool. I have seen multiple ISPs providing used kit and I'm sure you can find tons of reports online. The idea that ISPs don't recycle kit is laughable.

Using 10+ year old networking equipment is ok if you're using very dumb device such as a media converter or ONT device. Using 10+ year old routers is just unheard of in the networking industry. (Maybe if you're running Cisco or juniper enterprise gear, definitely not with VM's cheap router with worse than homebrew software.)

Just as well the hubs / gateways in people's homes are hardly the 'networking industry' they are CPE usually built by the lowest bidder.

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Responses inline.

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asim18 wrote:

A router is not simply an media converter. To give someone a router based on "it's NAT throughout is enough for your speed tier", and nothing else, is simply ridiculous.

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Why? If customers want more functionality they, apart from the farce that is the XGSPON / Hub5x stuff, can put it into bridge mode and replace its routing functionality. VMO2 are a mass-market provider catering to the lowest common denominator. No ISP is going to provide a WiFI 7 router with 4x4 MIMO, multigig ports, dynamic routing, etc, to people on a couple of hundred megabits a second by default.

"A router is not simply a media converter" I totally disagree. That’s all it is, look up its definition "A device on a network used for communication between two networks which can operate on different protocols".

Everyone incorrectly refers to a home device that contains a router, a network switch and a wireless access point as ‘router’, totally wrong. While VM refer to their network termination equipment as a hub, again really the wrong term, it’s far better than calling it a router.